Credit: Matt Keller Lehman

I hadn’t motored out to Avalon Park or, as I like to call it, “the Orlando neighborhood that’s nowhere near Orlando,” since Brianto’s lured me to the eastern fringes many years ago for one of their boffo cheesesteaks. Not that the drive is without its roadside merits. The pair of steam-spewing cooling towers overlooking the master-planned community give off a Springfield kinda vibe, though in a less cartoonish and more threatening sort of way. Alas, the smokestacks aren’t part of a nuclear plant but, rather, the Stanton Energy Center — an electricity hub powered by coal and natural gas, or so said Grok after the pal queried it while “driving” an electric-powered Tesla 3. So we paid no heed to the billowing plumes of vapor because, on this day, it was the power of wood — wood fire, to be specific — that consumed our senses.

That fire is generated from the innards of a Marra Forni oven at Ferratti’s, a back-corner stall inside the Marketplace at Avalon Park run by Daniel Ruvolo. And the Sicilian chef-owner makes the most out of the cramped yet design-forward quarters with its brushed copper finishes, gilded mirrors, red Sanremo espresso machine and a colorful mural on the wall featuring the trinacria. The three-legged Medusa head is the official emblem of Sicily, yet when I caught sight of that gorgeous beast of an oven, my face nearly turned to stone staring at it for as long as I did.

Only the display case of focaccia, bread and house-made pasta broke my gaze, and it seemed entirely appropriate to order the “Segreto di Bronte” ($25), a dish focused around that most Sicilian of ingredients, the “green gold” of that sunny island, the “secret of Bronte” — the pistachio. The nut is blended into a pesto cream sauce with guanciale and draped over large tubular paccheri. Stretched burrata covers it all, with a couple of yellow nasturtiums for aesthetic measure.

Fettuccine rolled into a creamy basil-pesto bianco ($17.50) with walnuts and Parmesan sauce was just as orgiastic as the carbonara ($24.50) finished inside a flambéed wheel of 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano cheese by Ruvolo himself. But tableside theatrics aside, this is carbonara the way it’s supposed to be — no cream, just egg yolks, black pepper, guanciale and plenty of Pecorino-Romano. It’s certainly the finest carbonara I’ve had in the city, and the same goes for the bruschetta toasted and layered with stracciatella, folds of prosciutto di San Daniele and fresh strawberries ($19). A favorite of favorites? Perhaps.

Ferratti's
Credit: Matt Keller Lehman

At this point, the spread of food on our table drew quite a few onlookers. “WHAT IS THAT?!” gasped a passerby, pointing to the “Schiacciata Napoletana” ($18), a folded monstrosity of pizza dough stuffed with mortadella, sun-dried tomato cream, arugula, pistachios and burrata along with a splash of 24-month aged balsamic. It’s a panuozzo of epic proportions (and delight). That pizza dough, BTW, is made with Caputo Nuvola flour and fermented for up to 72 hours before being fired at 700 degrees for a couple of minutes. On the classic Neapolitan pie ($21), the cornicione was as swollen and inflated as some of the press releases I receive on the daily. Buttressing the crust was a San Marzano tomato sauce, fat blobs of buffalo mozzarella and fresh basil. What’s not to like? Another like: All our food was served on actual ceramic dishes, a perk I didn’t expect in a food hall.

And, of course, cannoli, that most Sicilian of cappers, was had. First the pistachio ($12), with its creamy blend of mascarpone and ricotta whipped and infused with Sicilian pistachio, and then the ricotta, and the chocolate chip-filled “Siciliani” ($9) plugged at both ends with orbs of Ferrero Rocher.

If you ask me, Ferratti’s has already outgrown this space in just six months and will very likely grow into a full-fledged restaurant. All well and good, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy traveling out to the far reaches of Orange County and discovering some of the finest Italian fare in the back recesses of this out-of-the-way food hall. The thrill of the chase? Sure. But, let’s be real, Ferratti’s had me at first sight of that oven.

Ferratti’s, 3801 Avalon Park East Blvd., 407-385-8195, instagram.com/ferrattispizzeria

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This article appears in May 13-19, 2026.

Orlando restaurant critic. Orlando Weekly restaurant critic since 2006.